Migrant Kamal Dahal is among 100 Bhutanese-Nepali families to reach home ownership in Adelaide through HomeStart

LIVING in a bamboo hut in a refugee camp for 18 years, Bhutanese migrant Kamal Dahal never dreamt of owning his own home.

As a 12 year old, he was deported from Bhutan to Nepal along with the rest of his family after a 1990 democratic uprising by Nepalese-speaking people in Bhutan.

He met his wife, Tukula, in the camp in eastern Nepal and they came to Australia in 2008 under a refugee resettlement program.

“It was very hard,” Mr Dahal said.

“It was a difficult time in the refugee camp.

“We used to live in a hut made of bamboo and thatch — a temporary house.

“It was very crowded.”

The couple’s first son, Rohan, 12, was born in Nepal, while their second son Rewaz, 3, was born in Adelaide.

Now there are 250 Bhutanese-Nepali families in Adelaide, the second largest community in Australia after Brisbane.

This week they celebrated the 100th Bhutanese-Nepali family buying a house in Adelaide through HomeStart, a State Government authority which lends money to people with low to moderate incomes.

“When you buy a house after a long time in a refugee camp, we feel we have something of our own and where we are protected,” Mr Dahal said.

The number of loans given to Bhutanese refugees is more than 15 times that of people born in the UK and six times that of people born in India.

All but six per cent of the loans for Bhutanese families have been for houses in the Salisbury and Playford council districts.

Mr Dahal, the president of the Bhutanese Australian Association of SA, said he and others would not have been able to afford his Salisbury Plain house without HomeStart.

“In most cases, it would have been more difficult for them to obtain a home loan from mainstream banks,” he said.

HomeStart chief executive John Oliver said a seminar with five members of the Bhutanese community three years ago had led to a steady stream of home loan applications which had continued to grow over time.

The 100-house milestone was marked with a celebration at the Khmer Buddhist Hall in Parafield Gardens on Saturday, June 21.